Valas moved up closely to the wall and began to inspect it little by little, inch by inch. Halisstra wanted to get in close beside him, to see what he was looking at, but she dared not disturb his concentration. At that moment, yet another in the series of rumbles shook the room, and Halisstra nearly lost her footing.
“By the Abyss!” Valas yelled, waving his arms in an effort to avoid falling against the wall. “This is no good. I can’t do this with all of the—”
The scout’s words were cut off as the whole room suddenly lurched and began to tilt. Halisstra fell to the floor as the chamber was no longer level but instead tipped to one side, away from the wall they had been inspecting. She realized she was screaming as she rolled along the floor. The movement stopped, but all through the House she could hear the horrendous sound of fracturing rock, loud popping noises that sounded as if the whole world was snapping apart.
“We’ve no time! We’ve got to get out now!” Halisstra heard one of the males yell.
“Not without my possessions,” Quenthel insisted, sitting up and trying to stand on the yawing floor. “Get that door open—now!”
Pharaun, who had actually begun to levitate to avoid falling down, nodded as the others left their feet—all except Valas, who seemed perfectly capable of maintaining his balance despite the tilt of the floor.
The wizard removed a soft glove from inside his piwafwi. He donned it and began casting again as the floor made several popping sounds and began to tilt even more. A massive, glowing fist appeared, twice as tall as Pharaun, floating in the air in front of the mage. Pharaun guided the magical conjuration with his own gloved hand, turning it so that the knuckles were aimed at the point on the wall.
“Get back!” Pharaun yelled. “I don’t know what kind of backlash this will create.”
There was more popping from the structure of the House— closer, the sounds deafening—and Halisstra found she had her hands over her ears. Her heart was pounding in her chest.
We’re going to die in here, she thought. The whole house is falling apart, and we’re going to be crushed.
The magical fist lurched forward and slammed into the wall between the armoires, smacking against the stone with a powerful crunch. The wall cracked in several places. Pharaun directed the fist to back up and go again.
Quenthel was beside Halisstra, grabbing her by the arm.
“When he gets that wall down,” the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith said, “we will need to hurry. What’s the fastest way out of here?”
Halisstra looked at the other drow helplessly.
“We’re in the very heart of the House,” she answered. “The most protected point. It’ll take us forever to get out, no matter which way we go.”
Quenthel scowled, but then she nodded and moved away.
The giant fist had slammed into the wall two or three more times, and the wall was about to collapse.
One more blow should do it, Halisstra thought as she felt the concussions of more cracking and breaking beyond the room. If it’s not too late already, she added to herself.
Around Halisstra, the others were wide-eyed, trying to maintain their balance and eyeing the walls, ceiling, and floor warily.
The next slam of the fist finally did the section of wall in, and it collapsed in a pile of rubble. Behind it, a small chamber sat dark and dusty, filled with shelves containing a number of items Halisstra had never seen before. Quenthel pushed ahead of everyone else and strode—or rather hiked, for it was like walking up a hillside—into the chamber, snatching up a five-headed snake whip with a gleam in her eye.
“Yes!” was all she said as she held the weapon aloft, the five vipers hissing and writhing joyously.
Quickly, Quenthel gathered up several other items that obviously belonged to her then eyed the other things displayed on the shelves.
“No time,” Pharaun insisted. “We leave now!” Turning to Halisstra, the wizard demanded, “Which way is out? Get us there, before the whole place falls!”
Halisstra shook her head miserably.
“We’re as far away from the exits as we can be!” she shouted over the cacophony of popping, shattering stone. The room lurched again. “There’s no close way out!”
“Then I’ll make one,” Pharaun shouted. “Which direction is closest to the outside?”
Part of the ceiling on the far side of the room collapsed, sending a shower of stone fragments and dust into Halisstra’s face. She covered her nose and mouth with one hand as she flung her arm up to shield her eyes from the stinging shards of rock that pelted her. She couldn’t think. She was going to die. There was no way out, no escape—and no Lolth.
Halisstra felt the wizard’s hands grasp her arms.
“Tell me,” he shouted, “which way is the closest way to the outside, regardless of walls?”
Halisstra shook her head, trying to focus despite the panic rising in her chest. She spied Danifae clinging to Quenthel as both of them held on to the edge of the broken wall leading into the secret room. Jeggred had his claws embedded in the rock of the floor and was clambering along it toward his mistress.
The closest outside wall . . . which way?
An image appeared in her head, a mental map, and she knew that her mother’s chambers backed up nearly to an outside wall, which meant that the secret room Pharaun and Quenthel had discovered was very close to the outside.
Frantically, Halisstra pointed to the hidden room.
“That way!” she yelled.
Pharaun nodded. Scrambling on his hands and knees, the wizard headed in that direction, almost slipping and sliding back the other way as the room tilted again. Halisstra began to slide along the floor, herself and decided against trying to stop, instead bracing her feet against the far, lowest wall. She craned her neck around to watch the mage as he began yet another spell. He seemed to have an endless supply of them. He dug in his piwafwi and pulled out something too small for Halisstra to see, then he began to gesticulate wildly in the direction of the wall at the back of the secret closet. Before her eyes, a tunnel formed right into the rock itself, and after about fifteen feet, it broke through into space beyond.
“Come on!” Pharaun shouted to everyone as the whole House seemed to be one solid rumble.
The noise of the cracking stone was deafening, and Halisstra had barely been able to hear the wizard. The room tilted over even more sharply, and Halisstra realized that it was nearly sideways, with the new opening to the outside almost over her head. She began to float, lifting herself magically toward the impromptu exit, as the other members of the group did the same. As she reached the top and was about to pass through into the open air of the city beyond, she saw that Jeggred had a hold of Valas. The draegloth lifted effortlessly toward the hole, and it was at that moment that Halisstra remembered that Danifae could not levitate either.
The House Melarn daughter looked down desperately and saw her attendant, crouched in the low corner of the room, near the collapsed ceiling, scrambling to stay atop the shifting pile of rock as the room continued to tip over. Danifae’s eyes were blazing with fury as she gazed angrily up toward where everyone else was escaping the collapsing dwelling. There was another excruciatingly loud snapping sound as more stone buckled and popped, and Danifae, still inside the destroyed remains of House Melarn, was falling away.
Khorrl Xornbane was bloody and exhausted. His clan, gathered all around him, looked that way too. He had no idea how long they’d been fighting, but it was too long. They needed rest and water. They couldn’t keep this up for much longer. Unfortunately, the captain of Clan Xornbane feared that the day would grow much worse before it got better. He hoped he was wrong.
Khorrl had already passed the word that his troops were to abandon their positions defending House Melarn. They had been besieged there for so long and had used up so many of their firepots that he feared the place was growing unstable.
I’m not going to lose my boys that way, he told himself. The remains of his forces
were reforming on the opposite side
of the plaza from the House, and for the moment they were being left alone. It was hard to be sure how long that peace would last, though, because none of them could see very far in the thick smoke of the burning stone.
What Khorrl and his duergar could see told the tale clearly enough, though. The plaza was covered with the bodies of goblins and kobolds. Littered in between them were slightly fewer drow, though the number of dead dark elves surprised him. More dead gray dwarves than Khorrl would have liked were scattered here and there, too. It had been a hellish day, and it was far from over, the captain feared.
“Sir,” one of his aides said, running up to Khorrl, “we’ve completely abandoned the estate. The last of the troops have formed a line from that corner—” the young gray dwarf pointed through the smoke toward the edge of a dwelling behind them—“across to the flank of our main position, there.” He swung his arm across to the far right side of the plaza.
“Good,” Khorrl replied, visualizing the battlefield in his mind, since he could no longer clearly see it with his eyes.
“Also,” the aide continued, “there’s another force of drow coming toward us, from that direction.”
He pointed off to the left, where the plaza was joined by a large web street. It was, regrettably, the weakest point of Clan Xornbane’s defenses.
“Friend or foe? Did you get a look at their House insignias?”
The aide shrugged and said, “Not in this smoke.”
Khorrl sighed. He would have to send scouts out to reconnoiter the new troops. He said as much to the aide, who saluted him and started to turn away.
“Wait,” the captain said, and the aide stopped attentively. “Get some boys up there—” Khorrl pointed toward the street one level above where they were currently positioned—“I don’t want another swarm of those damned dark elves dropping in on us like they did earlier.”
“Yes, sir,” the aide replied, and hurried off to execute his captain’s commands.
Khorrl sighed again and turned to call for water. From behind him there was a loud popping sound, a sound he knew too well— splintering stone. He spun back around and peered through the gloom of smoke in the direction from which it had come. All up and down the lines that protected the clan’s position, the word was spreading, and it reached Khorrl quickly enough. House Melarn was burning to oblivion, and it was about to go over.
Khorrl shook his head, knowing what was about to happen. He hoped his aide was right and hoped that all his boys had gotten out of there. He lamented the ones who couldn’t, for whatever reason.
The popping started again, and grew louder and more steady. He could feel the vibrations in the stone beneath his feet. He almost wished he could see it, but in a way, he didn’t. It was going to be a deathtrap for anyone still inside.
The snapping, splintering sound of stone reached a crescendo, and there was one final explosion, a tremor that shook the entire street enough that Khorrl had to brace himself with his axe. There was a jerk, and the rumbling ceased. Khorrl knew the whole building had gone over the side, tumbling into the void.
A heartbeat later, there was a horrendous crash from below. House Melarn had struck something. A heartbeat later, he felt the vibrations of the impact. It was subtle, but for that sort of vibration to travel through a web street and into the walls of the huge cavern, and back along the other web streets, the initial impact must have been devastating.
It might take out several more streets, the duergar mused grimly.
“Sir!”
It was the aide again, rushing up to his captain, his look wide-eyed.
“What is it?” Khorrl demanded, wondering what would so shake up the lad.
“A spider! A huge one, as big as a house! It’s coming this way!”
Khorrl groaned, realizing just how much worse things had gotten. He hated being right.
chapter
fifteen
As he floated up and out of the collapsing building that had at one time been House Melarn, Pharaun Mizzrym heard a cry of anguish below him. Looking downward, he spied Halisstra, still emerging from the gaping opening that led into the ruin of her mother’s chambers. She was staring back down into the building.
For the rest of his days, the wizard wouldn’t be sure what convinced him to do it, but sensing that someone was still inside, he made up his mind in the blink of an eye to cast a spell. Yanking off his piwafwi and tossing it to Ryld, he uttered a quick arcane phrase and began transforming himself into a loathsome and wretched creature. He had seen the horrid thing several times before and in fact had hunted them for sport a few times in his younger days. As he dropped back down toward the crumbling building, which was beginning to break away from the last of its moorings and drop into the space below, he changed from the handsome drow elf with the winning smile to a winged woman with scaly hindquarters. Though the form was repulsive, it did have one advantage over the wizard’s natural shape: It could fly. Pharaun hoped his harpy shape would be strong enough to lift whoever was still trapped inside.
Halisstra seemed about to drop back down into the cavernous room, which was tilted completely on its side, but Pharaun grasped hold of her piwafwi and shoved her to the side. She looked up at him, startled, and gave a quick shriek of surprise and horror, even as she stumbled back. She fumbled for something tucked inside her own piwafwi, and the mage got the impression she had no clue it was him. She was about to attack him.
“Get up with the others!” he hissed, motioning with one of his clawed hands. “I’ll go back.”
He saw the flash of a dagger, and Halisstra relaxed the slightest bit, seeming to understand who the harpy really was. He filed away for later the fact that she’d secreted a weapon on her person.
Halisstra nodded and pushed herself up from the edge of the hole even as Pharaun folded his wings to his side and stepped over the opening so that he could drop through. Inside, he saw Danifae flailing madly atop a pile of rocks that had once been the ceiling, as the mound of rubble shifted beneath her. At that point, House Melarn was truly falling, and the two of them with it. He noticed that the rubble shifted and ground itself together as the building plummeted downward, grinding itself into oblivion. It almost seemed to be draining out of a hole below her, like some great hourglass. She was struggling to keep from getting sucked down with the stone, but her leg was wedged between two large blocks, and she could not gain a sufficient grip anywhere else in order to pull her limb free.
Pharaun sank quickly down to where the battle captive struggled, unfurling his wings at the last moment to slow his descent and come to hover beside the drow female. Danifae responded, reaching out to try to grab hold of the creature before her. Whether she realized it was Pharaun or not, she didn’t seem to care. Pharaun extended his taloned feet in her direction and worked his way to within her reach. She was sinking ever deeper into the debris pit. It was up to her knee, and when it shifted, she arched her head back and screamed more in frustration than in agony.
The instant Danifae had a solid grip on him, Pharaun began to thrash with his wings, exerting himself to rise up and out, hoping it would be enough to remove her from her predicament. He felt the resistance—not just of her weight, but also of her trapped leg—but he tugged and flapped, working to free her. Finally, with one last heave, he felt the resistance give, and he was barreling upward, Danifae clinging tightly to his legs. He soared toward the opening as the room continued to drop, and there was a massive roaring crash and a blinding cloud of dust as he shot out through the widening hole.
Once free of the room, Pharaun realized he really wasn’t flying upward at all but was hovering in place as the entire structure of House Melarn fell away beneath them. He saw it smash into a web street that stretched across beneath it, and when it struck the thoroughfare a glancing blow, the rubble tumbled around so that it was spinning as it fell. If they’d been a moment longer in freeing themselves, the wizard realized with a shudder, he ne
ver would have been able to navigate his way out of the hole. The room would have spun and tumbled with him and Danifae trapped inside.
Both of them watched for a moment, awed, as the massive stone structure plummeted downward toward the bottom of the city. Finally, with a sickening boom, it struck somewhere far below, and the concussive impact reverberated all the way up to where they hovered.
Pharaun was beginning to feel the strain of trying to fly while holding so much weight. Struggling to see through the thick, choking dust that had been stirred up, he eyed what was left of the web street where House Melarn had been, portions of it still aflame, and saw that chunks of it, too, were giving out. Instead of heading straight up toward that spot, he veered to the side, away from the worst of the damage. Where the calcified webbing broadened into a plaza it was still solid and firm. As he labored in that direction, another major section of the street fell away, following House Melarn to the bottom. What was left was just a ledge jutting out into space.
The mage pumped his wings, steering the two of them toward the firmer pavement, past the ledge, which extended perhaps ten feet from the plaza and was twice as wide. When he was over the plaza, he sank down quickly, flapping his wings to force himself to fall off to one side rather than directly on top of Danifae. The drow female dropped right where he’d set her down and sprawled there, drawing deep, ragged breaths. He settled down next to her, none too gently himself, and collapsed. Little points of light swam in his vision as he gasped for breath in the dust-choked air. His limbs were leaden, and he could do nothing but listen to Danifae’s and his own panting.
“That was some rescue effort,” Ryld said, floating down next to the wizard. “I don’t know what sort of terror you’re supposed to be, but please don’t ever try to save me looking like that. I’m liable to kill you before I know it’s you.”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 64